byte-compile-file: emacs vs the command line.

[rclayton@monmouth.edu (R. Clayton)]

I'm running this

  $ emacs -version
  GNU Emacs 23.4.1
  Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
  You may redistribute copies of Emacs
  under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
  For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.

  $ 

on this

  $ uname -a
  Linux UlanBator 3.10-2-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.10.5-1 (2013-08-07) i686 GNU/Linux

  $ 

a debian testing system updated weekly.  When I byte-compile a file using
byte-compile-file within emacs, I get this

  Compiling file /home/rclayton/.emacs.d/rmail-init.el at Sat Dec 28 17:24:55 2013
  Entering directory `/home/rclayton/.emacs.d/'
  rmail-init.el:56:21:Warning: reference to free variable `mail-mode-map'
  rmail-init.el:61:21:Warning: reference to free variable `rmail-mode-map'
  rmail-init.el:63:15:Warning: assignment to free variable
      `rmail-confirm-expunge'

but when I try it from the command-line I get this:

  $ make
  emacs --batch --eval '(byte-compile-file "~/.emacs.d/rmail-init.el" nil)'
  Loading 00debian-vars...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/20apel.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50asymptote.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50auto-complete-el.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50cmake-data.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el (source)...
  Loading debian-ispell...
  Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-default.el (source)...
  Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-dicts.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50flim.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50haskell-mode.el (source)...
  Loading /usr/share/emacs23/site-lisp/haskell-mode/haskell-mode-autoloads.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50haxe.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50lua-mode.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50mgp.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50noweb.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50scsh.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50vm.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs23/site-start.d/50vm-init.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50w3m-el.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50w3m-el-snapshot.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/51semi.el (source)...
  Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/65wl.el (source)...

  In toplevel form:
  rmail-init.el:5:4:Error: Cannot open load file: general-utils

  $ ls -l rm*
  -rw------- 1 rclayton rclayton 2548 Dec 28 17:19 rmail-init.el

  $ 

In both cases rmail-init.elc didn't exist before compiling.  Why is the
command-line compile failing, and how can I fix it?

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